Challenges For Higher Education
Only To Continue, Warren Predicts

Published: March 9, 1999 12:00AM

A graphic picture of the serious challenges that will be faced by higher education in the near future was painted at The College of Wooster Monday by David Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

Speaking to a group of about 60 people, composed primarily of college presidents and their spouses, Warren's speech came during the annual conference of the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities. The conference, involving 25 Presbyterian-affiliated colleges across the United States, began Saturday and concludes today.

Warren, a past president of Ohio Wesleyan University, focused on three major points in his luncheon address. He said the financial base of higher education is eroding, that a tidal wave of 18-year-olds will break over institutions of higher learning in the next decade and that colleges will increasingly look to new technology and distance education.

Of the latter premise, Warren asked, "Will this be the silver bullet or the bullet through the heart of our institutions?"

Talking about government aid to higher education, Warren characterized the situation as "the fed has fled." He said that since 1981 aid programs have declined by 34 percent and the amount of funding for Perkins loans has dropped by 63 percent. He said it would take a $1.5 billion increase in federal student aid to restore funding to the 1981 level.

Warren also pointed out that corporations and foundations have continued to decrease their giving levels, making for "a very difficult competition" between public and private institutions.

The speaker said that since 1980 tuition has increased, on average, 104 percent for independent colleges, which during that period have hiked their financial aid an average of 328 percent. He said that at the present rate most independent colleges would suffer significant financial shortfalls -- as much as 25 percent -- by the year 2015.

Warren predicted that by 2009 the nation's higher education system would be overwhelmed by a 21 percent increase in 18-year-olds, which he called a "cohort unlike any we have ever seen." He said most of that increase would come from black, Hispanic, Asian and native Americans.

Of those minority students, Warren said, a large percentage would come from an impoverished background and would enter the picture with big remedial and financial aid needs.

He said that with this oncoming wave of students "everything in their path will be changed" about how colleges do business, from the kind of food that is served to the culture of campus employees, to the relationship between the campuses and the communities in which they are located. He said that admissions, financial aid, students services and development fund offices must all plan for major changes.

He said that increasingly, the new technology will attract a cohort of students that are married and/or working full time.

While colleges will utilize CD ROM technology, cable TV, the World Wide Web and interactive video to handle distance learning programs rather than the traditional "sage on a stage" classroom format, Warren said, the cost of technology will continue to significantly drive up costs of instruction at a time when colleges are being forced to find ways to cut expenses.

Warren told his listeners to evaluate the coming changes in terms of the "seven Cs test," that is, looking at how they will impact courses, credits, curriculum, colleagues, community, campus and college.

"Technology threatens to turn upside down and inside out these concepts," Warren said.

He told the college administrators present that they need to "go back to ... ancient and honorable statements of mission" of their respective institutions to determine how they will be influenced by such changes.

Despite what he said must sound like pessimistic overtones, Warren characterized himself as the "house optimist" on the future of independent higher education.

He said that independent education will survive because it has traditionally offered "great teaching which transforms lives" and because it is "organized around education of the whole person."

Warren said the test over time for independent colleges will be. "Do we educate students to find work, or a life worth living?"